


Furlough

by The_Grynne



Category: Kings
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-18
Updated: 2009-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 01:03:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Grynne/pseuds/The_Grynne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is, above all things, a soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Furlough

_I hear the violoncello, ('tis the young man's heart's complaint,)  
I hear the key'd cornet, it glides quickly in through my ears,  
It shakes mad-sweet pangs through my belly and breast._

I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera,  
Ah this indeed is music - this suits me.

\--Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'

* * *

**Furlough**

At night, Jack can hear distant mortars, trucks, helicopters flying supplies across the border. Explosions that remind him of fireworks and showers of petals in Shiloh; the litter he used to look at and think _But who will clean the pieces from the gutter?_ He hears orders radioed in from somewhere, going somewhere else. The sounds of opiate-induced nightmares, combat-jacks and unauthorised video games, the dry whispering of women slinging toddlers, their homes downsized to the contents of their pockets and backpacks. Some of his men complain that they can't sleep, but he doesn't mind it.

Powdered eggs, swallowed down at the ass-crack of dawn, taste all the more enticing for not being dished out with a leaden side of rhetoric. The battles are no clearer-cut, but everything he does seems more concrete out here, he doesn't feel so helpless. And if David were with him now, if they were back now in the trenches, Jack would tell him that.

And, given the chance, _Sorry about before_.

Get out of there, get out. Before the plots and the honey-traps and the poisoned arrows get you. Before they crush your music to splinters, and the crown starts to smolder, and the flowers start to rot. 'Tis better to face death in the arms of your brothers.

THE END


End file.
